Get Ice Cream Sandwich’s keyboard now, no root needed

Yes, we know - the wait for Ice Cream Sandwich to show up for your device and/or in your region is getting frustrating. But you can slake your hunger for Ice Cream now with a taste of its new keyboard, for any Android device. Thanks to XDA member "for.digit". (funny how no one on XDA is ever called Bob or Sam.) He's wrapped up the new ICS version of Android's native keyboard in a free Market app, available to just about anyone.

It's not quite perfect, thanks to the noticeable lack of the microphone button. And since the active voice dictation was one of the things that really put the ICS keyboard over the top, the Android Market app becomes something of a theme for the standard Gingerbread or Froyo keyboard. Given the deep integration in ICS, a significantly improved version of Voice Dictation would be almost impossible to include, though hooking into the previous versions of voice to text should be easy enough. But hey, it's got that neat-o ice blue color scheme all the developers are going crazy for these days, right?

If you're lucky enough to own a Nexus S, Galaxy S II or Optimus 3D, you can actually try out Ice Cream Sandwich right now. If you're the rooted/custom ROM type, all it takes is a quick flash - just make sure to create a backup. The earliest ICS ROMs are a long way from stable. And of course, you can always pay - or wait - for the Galaxy Nexus in your home country.